Does The Buffalo Mass Shooting Indicate A Change In White Supremacy?

The face of extreme acts of hate and White supremacy has traded White, middle-aged men wearing sheets and pointed hats for armed, younger White males wearing camouflage.

Gendron shot and killed several black people after driving several hours to a grocery store in a black neighborhood.

Although news of the Buffalo mass shooting on May 14 seemed to take many Americans by surprise, maybe it should not have. In fact, targeted attacks against Blacks and other people of color is nothing new under the sun, and many say that the country should expect similar hateful acts to continue. But what has shifted is the face of White supremacist groups. Once upon a time, there was a stereotype for the textbook racist capable of enacting mass violence that typically fit the description of a middle-aged White man. But that prototype has changed, and neo-Nazi and White supremacist organizations have become more clever in their recruitment efforts, which has led to increasingly younger White American males taking the lead in carrying out vicious and deadly acts of racial violence.

It’s a common misconception that White supremacy is cloaked in white sheets and marches the streets of the deep rural south holding burning torches — covered with tattooed swastikas. Although these images exist, White supremacist groups have become more sophisticated in their messaging and recruitment. Despite major tech companies’ attempts to curb extremist content on their platforms, the face and reach of extremist groups extend beyond cliché racist prototypes and now even lurks within the crevices of the world-wide-web. The gruesome racially-motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, last Saturday at the hands of 18-year-old Peyton S. Gendron is further proof that racial violence has traded White, middle-aged men wearing sheets and pointed hats for young White men wearing camouflage.

But Gendron has not been only the mildly pubescent White male — still wet behind the ears — or younger adult with a deeply rooted hatred toward Blacks and the desire to kill. Dylan Roof, the convicted killer who murdered nine Black churchgoers on June 17, 2015, during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, including the church’s senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, was only 21…